Comparative Metagenomic Profiling of Viromes Associated with Four Common Mosquito Species in China

Abstract

Vast viruses are thought to be associated with mosquitoes. Anopheles sinensis, Armigeres subalbatus, Culex quinquefasciatus, and Culex tritaeniorhynchus are very common mosquito species in China, and whether the virome structure in each species is species-specific has not been evaluated. In this study, a total of 2222 mosquitoes were collected from the same geographic location, and RNAs were sequenced using the Illumina Miseq platform. After querying to the Refseq database, a total of 3,435,781, 2,223,509, 5,727,523, and 6,387,867 paired-end reads were classified under viral sequences from An. sinensis, Ar. subalbatus, Cx. quinquefasciatus, and Cx. tritaeniorhynchus, respectively, with the highest prevalence of virus-associated reads being observed in Cx. quinquefasciatus. The metagenomic comparison analysis showed that the virus-related reads were distributed across 26 virus families, together with an unclassified group of viruses. Anelloviridae, Circoviridae, Genomoviridae, Iridoviridae, Mesoniviridae, Microviridae, Myoviridae, Parvoviridae, Phenuiviridae, and Podoviridae were the top ten significantly different viral families among the four species. Further analysis reveals that the virome is species-specific in four mosquito samples, and several viral sequences which maybe belong to novel viruses are discovered for the first time in those mosquitoes. This investigation provides a basis for a comprehensive knowledge on the mosquito virome status in China.

Notes

Acknowledgements

We thank the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention for assistance in mosquito sampling within the Hubei Province. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Science and Technology Basic Work Program 2013FY113500).

Author Contributions

HX and ZY designed the experiments. YW, and LZ, carried out the experiments. HX, YW, CS, and AE analyzed the data. HX, YW and ZY wrote the paper. HX and CS checked and finalized the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Compliance with Ethics Standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Animal and Human Rights Statement

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.